Gaylor has helped transform the Freedom From Religion Foundation from obscurity into the nation’s largest group of atheists and agnostics, with a fast-rising membership and increasing legal clout.

Next week, the group started by Gaylor and her mother in the 1970s to take on the religious right will fight its most high-profile battle when the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on its lawsuit against President Bush’s faith-based initiative.

FFRF is an excellent organization. If anyone can make a case for keeping religion out of govenment, it will be Annie Laurie Gaylor. Although she will probably feel like she's in the "Lion's Den" with Alito, Roberts, and Scalia sitting on the Supreme Court Thrones. I wish her good luck.

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration tried to shield its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from a legal challenge Wednesday, urging the Supreme Court to block a claim that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

At issue is whether a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics has legal standing, as taxpayers, to bring its complaint in the federal court system. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, characterizes the White House's initiative as a singling out of faith-based organizations to the exclusion of other organizations.

Taking one extreme, Justice Stephen Breyer asked a lawyer for the White House during arguments before the high court whether a taxpayer would be able to challenge a law in which Congress sets up a government church at Plymouth Rock where people can worship in the Puritan religion.

"I would say no," responded the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, but he added that such a church could be challenged in other ways — such as by members of other religions — just not on the basis that a taxpayer has been injured.

Taking the opposite extreme, Justice Antonin Scalia asked a lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation whether taxpayers would be able to sue over the use of security money for a trip where the president addresses a religious group.

More at the link.

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

On a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a group of taxpayers did not have standing to sue the US government for its funding of faith-based initiatives with federal money. The decision, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, was written by Samuel Alito, the second Supreme Court Justice appointed by President George W. Bush, according to the website SCOTUSBlog.

The group People for the American Way slammed the decision as threatening the First Amendment.

"It’s a bad day for the First Amendment. The Supreme Court just put a big dent in the wall of separation between church and state, and a big smile on Pat Robertson’s face," said Ralph Ness, the group's president, in a statement. "Today’s ruling will make it more difficult for citizens whose tax dollars are being unlawfully spent to subsidize religion to bring a complaint in court. It is also consistent with a broader strategy by right-wing judges and activists to restrict standing for average Americans to challenge powerful government and business interests."

Some very interesting comments at the link...

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

This is an Editorial written in the New York Times on June 26 after the SC and its new conservative majority gave Bush another religious victory and cut into the heart of the Constitution one more time:

Chief Justice Roberts and the four others in his ascendant bloc used the next-to-last decision day of this term to reopen the political system to a new flood of special-interest money, to weaken protection of student expression and to make it harder for citizens to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state. In the process, the reconfigured court extended its noxious habit of casting aside precedents without acknowledging it — insincere judicial modesty scored by Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion.

Consider this ruling a wake-up call: the most important domestic power the president possesses is to nominate justices. Voters must choose presidents who will select nominees who will defend, not sabotage liberty, and elect members of the U.S. Senate who will provide oversight, not a rubber stamp.

Congress, which has formally refused to authorize these faith-based offices, must now act to formally defund them. That is the only remedy left for this grotesque miscarriage of justice. Let Congress pick up the ball that the Supreme Court has so irresponsibly fumbled.

Members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation are encouraged to make a fuss! Compose a prompt letter to local newspapers or other media decrying this decision. (Follow your newspaper's guidelines to improve your chance of publication.) Place pressure on Congress to end the "faith-based initiative," including the internal, multimillion dollar federal bureaucracy which the Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit tried to halt.

FFRF Press Release

Supreme Court Decision and Dissent

Complete Background on Case

Newspaper Editorials Blasting Hein Decision:

Three Bad Rulings: New York Times editorial Faith and taxes: Los Angeles Times editorial

This is a very scary and important issue. Hitler used the same tactic of getting the church on board!!

_________________Completely sane world
madness the only freedom

An ability to see both sides of a question
one of the marks of a mature mind